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Updated: May 26, 2025
At length the messenger returned, saying that his Majesty had returned to the city, and was now ready to receive the embassy. Upon this the Captain-Major embarked in his barge, accompanied by Davane as interpreter, taking with him several large Indian boats, loaded with packages.
The Captain-Major replied that it was on board the other ships, but that they had gold and silver to pay for what they bought. The Sheikh observed that with gold and silver they could obtain all over the world whatever they required, and he then requested the Captain-Major to order the trumpets to sound, as he and his people much liked to hear them.
The Captain-Major consented on condition that if God should bring them back to Lisbon, they would agree again to be put in chains, and be thus presented to the King to receive his pardon.
Next day the overseer brought the Captain-Major twenty pieces of fine white stuff embroidered with gold, and twenty other pieces of stuff also white, and ten of coloured silk; also four large loaves of benzoin and fifty bags of musk, as well as six basins and six jars of porcelain.
The factor wrote to the Captain-Major, warning him of the treachery intended, and a message was conveyed to the King intimating that Vasco da Gama would not come until proper hostages were delivered up. Three nairs were accordingly sent to the factory, one of whom the Castilian pointed out as the King's nephew, and advised that he especially should be strictly watched.
The pilots, having been brought in chains before the King, as Vasco da Gama had sworn to do, they were pardoned. The old Jew, the Moorish pilots, and the prisoners taken in the fustas were landed, and either from the instructions they received from the priests on board or afterwards, all became Christians, the old Jew taking the name of Gaspar da Gama, the Captain-Major standing as his godfather.
Before going on shore himself, the Captain-Major sent Davane, accompanied by Joab da Nunez, one of the convicts, a Christian and a man of talent, who could speak Arabic and Hebrew, and also understood the Moorish language, although he could not speak it, that he might go to the city and ascertain the way of transacting business; he was ordered to buy only provisions, while he listened to what was said without speaking himself.
Then the captain-major said that there was no need of the signatures of all, but only of those who best understood the business of the sea. Then the pilot and master named them, and they were three seamen.
To this, however, the minister appeared in no way inclined to agree. In the meantime the men who had landed with the Captain-Major, and who had been kept separated from him, were in great alarm as to what had happened, as were also those on board the ships; for the factor could give them no information, and serious fears were entertained that he had been murdered.
Seeing the weather in this state, the pilot and master told the captain-major that they had great fear on account of the weather because it was becoming a tempest, and the ships were weak, and that they thought they ought to put in to land and run along the coast and return to seek the great river into which they had first entered, because the wind was blowing that way, and they could enter it for all that there was a storm.
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